Sunday 23 October 2011 11.06 EDT
First published on Sunday 23 October 2011 11.06 EDT

Anita Brookner writes sad novels; it was nice to see her happy, winning the Booker McConnell fiction prize on Thursday. It's the sort of thing that would never be allowed in one of her books, where all the heroines are losers. Brookner's sombre, lonely, self-concealing ladies watch from corners, while nastier, more attractive people have a good time, exude sexual ferocity and win all the prizes.

I greatly admire Hotel du Lac and, because of the prize, lots of people will now read it and love it. All the same, I think the wrong book was chosen this year and that wrong choice raises some interesting questions about what a big fiction prize like this should be for.

The 1984 judges' point of view was officially represented by their chairman, Richard Cobb, former Oxford professor of modern history, in the speech he made after LWT's cameras had gone. Cobb's blithe dismissal of "a Proust or a Joyce" as a suitable winner ("Not that I would know about that, having never read either") could be put down to lovable English philistinism, but his defence of the selection process raised hackles: "We have gone for sobriety, elegance, restraint, clarity of style and… steered clear of flamboyance, the lush and the torrid, pretentious and unremittingly depressing. We have also succeeded in avoiding political novels."

He went on to express his horror at the sort of things they'd had to read: "Novels about drink, sex, violence, novels with 'ugly' words, even one written entirely in what appeared to be Glaswegian". (How barbaric!) The speech made the winning novel sound smaller, safer and simpler than is really the case. Cobb said he wouldn't mind his panel being called unadventurous. But why shouldn't the general public want to read outrageous, peculiar novels? Or even political novels?

The Booker prize sells books and, in the last few years, it has become an Event. Of course, the gossip and razzmatazz that go with this can be a bit silly. But it's not just a publishers' beanfeast or an occasion for London literati to indulge in back-slapping. Because it has become more conspicuous, the prize can do more for writers – so it can afford to take risks.

The more ambitious choice this year would have been JG Ballard's Empire of the Sun. It wasn't just hype that made this the universal favourite. The novel is brilliant and extraordinary: an eerie vision of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp seen through the matter-of-fact, anxious eyes of a boy, a sort of Huckleberry Finn in Shanghai. The word "important" always sounds pompous and windy; still, I think it is an important novel and will last.

Perhaps committees of judges are bound to get it wrong: the Nobel and the Goncourt have goofed often enough. Perhaps it's enough that a good writer won. But I think our biggest national book prize ought to celebrate what's troublesome, flamboyant and marginal as well as what's restrained, classical and good mannered. Is it time for an Alternative Booker?